Hannah B. Watson: A Pioneering Patriot

When her husband Ebenezer died, Hannah Bunce Watson took over the Courant, becoming one of the first women publishers in the country.

When her husband Ebenezer died, Hannah Bunce Watson took over the Courant, becoming one of the first women publishers in the country. (Courant File Photo)

JOSEPH F. NUNESSpecial to The Courant

Hanna Bunce Watson overcame the confined role afforded to Colonial women, and a personal life punctuated by early heartbreak, to leadThe Connecticut Courant through one of its most critical times.

Born Dec. 28, 1749, in the town of Lebanon, she was already a 21-year-old widow when she married Ebenezer Watson, The Courant's second owner, on Aug. 1, 1771. Bunce had been previously married to a "Mr. Cotton," by whom she had a daughter named Eliza, early Courant biographies noted.

Watson, himself a widower, brought to the marriage two small children of his own, a baby named Elizabeth and 3-year-old James, who died soon after the nuptials. The couple had four more children from 1772 to 1777: James, Mary, Jerusha and Ebenezer. A 1909 Courant report refers to "the Cotton child and the Watson children growing up together." When Ebenezer Watson died of smallpox in September 1777, his obituary noted: "He has left a melancholy widow with five young children," indicating that Eliza also had died by then.

As The Courant's third owner, Hannah Watson continued her second husband's dedication to the Patriot cause through the newspaper while handling significant responsibilities at home. She did much of the editing and finances as printer George Goodwin focused on production duties, soon becoming her business partner. (While Hannah Watson thus became the first female publisher in Connecticut, there already had been more than a half-dozen women running newspapers elsewhere in the colonies.)

Hannah was 29 when shemarried her next-door neighbor, 37-year-old Barzillai Hudson, on Feb. 11, 1779. Hudson, a longtime family friend and member of Second Church, was himself widowed with two children — Sarah, 11, and William, 9. The couple would have four children of their own, future Hartford Mayor Henry Hudson in 1780, Olive in 1781, Lavinia in 1784, and Hannah, who died three years after her birth in 1793.

Thus did Hannah Bunce Cotton Watson Hudson bridge two remarkable eras in The Courant's early history while at times raising under one roof five different sets of children, including half-siblings and step-siblings.

When she died from the flu at age 57, her one-line death notice published Sept. 30, 1807, in The Courant, hardly befitted her significant accomplishments. It simply read: "DIED--In this city, on Sunday last, MRS. HANNAH HUDSON, wife of Mr. Barzillai Hudson, senior editor of this newspaper."

"Hannah B," as Courant employees affectionately called her through the years, was long memorialized by a third-floor conference room named for her at The Courant's home on Broad Street in Hartford. She is buried in the Old South Burying Ground in Hartford, next to the remains of Barzillai Hudson, who died in August 1823 at age 81.